Prince of Kitties

- HP and SP never regenerate on their own

- Potions, spells, etc. restore twice as much HP or SP as usual

It might be interesting to see how this affects game balance.

Because it would be nice to make the game a little friendlier to non-scumbag adventurers.

(Taking some hints from Sil...)

- Successfully applying any magical effect to a monster or NPC - charm, sleep, curse, etc. - gets you 5 XP.

- Identifying an unknown item yourself (without help from a sage) gets you 10 XP.

- Encountering any creature or NPC for the first time in a scenario gets you 15 XP.

- Entering a new dungeon, town, or wilderness square gets you 20 XP.

Also: add an option to require an extra keystroke (probably 'a' while in combat mode) for melee attacks.

tl;dr you usually have to kill at least one person/critter to finish a scenario, but it would be nice to not have to kill *every* hostile thing you encounter just to gain experience.

Sound cool?

Ah okay. Not sure yet what you're missing, but you can't get anything new done at the mage school unless Astervis comes along with you.

Hmm. Have you talked to Astervis yet?

BTW I'm starting an AtG run like right now, so I'll be at that part at some point... Maybe this weekend? Not sure, it's a huge scenario.

Ugh... I would try to help you but I can't quite remember this one. I think it has something to do with disks and rope and a robot? I don't remember a Colbin... I do remember another guy you had to talk to, and having to wait 10+ days for him because of brokenness in the original BoE engine (which can be fixed by unchecking a compatibility option in CBoE, thankfully).

Let me see if I can remember.

- Have you talked to the hermit wizard guy yet, and gotten him to analyze the cuiniform tablets?

- Have you tried to talk to him again when he was supposed to be finished?

- Have you gone back to the old magery school and fought an escaped Efreet? (I forget if that's in the right order.)

And darn, I really need to get out that scenario and actually finish the thing some time. I promised myself I'd do that at some point, when I had the time... But I seem incapable of maintaining my motivation past the Troglo part. Grr.

Pretty good actually. You can find alchemical stuff strewn about the caverns in various places. Not sure there's enough of it to play without magic though.

... Hmm. Actually now that you mention it, this is an interesting idea. The skill points freed by avoiding magic could be dumped into Luck.

The main problems are

a) You won't be able to hit anything reliably, and everything will be able to hit you reliably.

If somehow (a) does not apply, spellcasters can slow and curse you until it does.

Basically, the way the game is designed, I'm not sure it's possible to play most scenarios without a reliable source of Bless.

(Though if Strength potions are available one could stock up...)

Gemini never joins the party AFAIK. There are a few other NPCs:

- Byrn will join you if you have a really really good reputation.

- There's a legendary archer who you can recruit

- There's a Slith priest who you can recruit in the final chapter

I think that's it for "permanent" NPCs.

... Giving up, this guy is not even remotely challenging. If I want to have any fun I'll need a build that doesn't make mincemeat of everything. (Yawn.)

Maybe magic-only? That could be interesting, too bad spell points are capped at 150.

Finished off the Slith bandits.

10 Str

3 Dex

4 Int

10 Edged

3 Defense

3 Mage

3 Priest

2 Assassination

4 Luck

98 HP, 34 SP

On to the actual plot.

Mushroom cavern mostly cleaned out...

10 Str

3 Dex

4 Int

10 Edged

2 Defense

3 Mage

3 Priest

3 Luck

65 HP, 19 SP

Finished the cave, now level 8 with

10 Str

3 Dex

4 Int

10 Edged

3 Mage

3 Priest

40 HP, 18 SP

Next up, the mushroom cavern.

A few minutes in, he's survived two Goblin ambushes in passages north of Fort Silver and is now level 3. His stats are

6 Str

2 Dex

2 Int

8 edged

3 Mage

3 Priest

15 HP, 18 SP

Next up, the Goblin cave itself...

Meet Matthias:

Matthias is a wimp. He's a bit sickly, not very good at magic, and potions don't work for him. He's a got a little training with a sword, and that's basically it.

(He has no advantages, and all disadantages except Chronic Disease. Originally he had that too, but I had to remove it because it kept killing him during overland travel. )

The Imperial Military figured they could send him down to Avernum to get him out of everyone's hair, and maybe shut up the Avernum officials who kept wanting more soldiers. Unfortunately he landed right in a BoE scenario...

His starting stats are:

6 Strength

6 Edged weapons

3 Mage spells

3 Priest spells

6 HP, 18 SP

Let's see where this goes.

Talk to the Slith researcher at the operations center about mushrooms, that will get you started on finding Konax Minoc. It's a bit involved (and may cost you some NPCs if you're not careful).

To beat this dead horse just a little more:

My earlier analysis of skills was actually pretty flawed, because it doesn't take into account how hugely important it is to gain levels. Especially because more levels means you can raise strength, luck, and weapons specialties.

Also, weapons skills do in fact boost hit chance (and apparently damage). It's just not visible in the stats for some reason.

Not that this matters; I have almost no spare time now, and will probably never make it to the end of ATG. Ah well.

Edit: anyway, upshot is: if you want no challenge at all, start a singleton like so...

Race: Human

Abilities: Cave Lore, Woodsman, Highly Alert

10 Strength

3 Mage Spells

3 Priest Spells

From there, raise a weapons specialty first up to 6 or so, putting the spare points into SP. Then Intelligence to 4, then Dexterity to 3; then just specialize however you want, because nothing will be able to stop you.

I happen to love towns, and interacting with NPCs. Especially when they're done well. It makes me feel like I'm exploring a world, not just playing a game. This is one of the things I loved about Alcritas' and Stareye's BoE scenarios, they felt *immersive*.

Also there's a certain high-contrast thrill to being an "adventurer" doing adventurish things, and then going back to town and doing something completely normal.

("Yeah, I was in a cave all day massacring cultists. Work's been tough lately. I'll take the chili and a Bud Lite, thanks.")

Yes, if you're using a netbook.

Hmm. Good question. I'm not really sure. I chose a stacking WM because tiling WMs are problematic for me in a lot of ways; otherwise there's no particular goal, or reason for me to use Blackbox as a base. Which come to think of it may not be a good thing.

I will say that I'm aiming roughly for something in a weird area between Ratpoison, Fvwm, and Fluxbox, i.e.

- Stacking window management

- Simple to configure

- Supporting several different use patterns

- Reasonable default configuration

- Supporting keybindings in a way that prevents clobbering

I'm interested in borrowing a bunch of features from Fvwm's set, but I'm not sure which ones would make the most sense.

(Thanks for getting my to clarify this BTW, that was helpful.)

Edit: actually come to think of it I have a good reason for using Blackbox: it is by far the fastest window manager I know of.

(Whether it will still be when I'm done with it is of course an open question.)

Yesterday I decided to fork the old, unmaintainted Blackbox window manager. Here is the project on Gitorious:

https://gitorious.org/whackbox

So far I've gotten it to compile and run successfully with -Werror -Wall. Which is not really saying much.

But now that it compiles cleanly, I'm looking for features to add. There are a couple (scrolling virtual desktops and Ratpoison-style keybindings) that are definitely on my agenda, but I'm not sure what else. A more convenient way of launching programs, maybe?

Any ideas before I start delving into the code again? I know there are at least a few Linux users here... I'm hoping to start with simpler ideas first, and eventually start implementing more complex ones.

i think swords are neat do you think swords are neat!!

QFT. It's good to remember that we usually think of swords and weaponry from the safely distant context of high fantasy.

To us a broadsword is a shiny symbol. To a medieval peasant, a broadsword was the thing a knight might use to disembowel her if she looked at him wrong.

So, an interesting tidbit: the mage spell Strength gives you a constant bless level no matter how low the caster's Intelligence. Very useful for those first few levels!

ATM I've got a singleton (based on Jenneke) starting "At the Gallows" with the following stats...

9 Strength

7 Edged Weapons

3 Mage Spells

3 Priest Spells

Everything else is left alone. So far, so good.

That's horrible, Valdain. My condolances to you and your family.

Funny you should ask...

I was working on a BoE scenario. But I cannot stand the mess that is BoE nodework, and finally came to accept that I'd never get the stupid thing done as a game. So now I'm translating the outline into a short story, set in its own universe, with the Exile trappings entirely removed. I'm already liking it a lot better that way.

Assuming I ever finish the first draft, copies of it will be available upon request. I can't say exactly when that will be though.

Redemption Ark (Alastair Reynolds) -> surprisingly uncomfortable reading. Most of the characters have a closet full of skeletons, and all of them have the kind of small inconsistencies that plague real human beings. Personally I think that's rather awesome.

Real World Haskell -> because I have too much spare time right now, and functional programming is supposed to be cool. I'll see if I can hack it, so to speak.

IIRC it's pretty much canonical that Protagoras is the traitor, and that his actions in Redemption are, well, an attempt to redeem himself.